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COVID-19

I understand panic – Dr. Abdu Sharkawy

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5 minute read

Infection Disease Expert

Dr. Abdu Sharkawy is a Canadian Infectious Disease Specialist

I understand panic. When I first took swimming lessons at the age of 5, it was near impossible to resist the urge to clasp my hands into any part of my instructor, telling myself I would sink and drown otherwise. No matter how many times I survived this harrowing trial of nerves, my reaction was the same. I needed that anchor, that safety post to stave off certain terror. I’m a grown adult now and still not the best swimmer. Every now and then the water gets a little high, my breaths more shallow, my chest and throat tighten. But I don’t give in.

I understand fear. When I climbed Kilimanjaro at the age of 32, I found sepsis, delirium and a dislocated knee to contend with on my descent. And as I pleaded my case in broken Swahili to a group of older men playing cards outside a dusty motel, the response was something between indifference and jest. After all, death is everywhere in the world’s poorest continent. What was so special about me? A privileged tourist, someone sure to have enjoyed more and sacrificed less than most anyone else there. And as I came to the realization I was likely to die of septic shock, I was terrified as much by not being prepared for the moment…as not being cared for while it was happening. But I persevered. A clumsy concoction of bottled water, salt and every conceivable antibiotic I could rustle up from my backpack saved me. Barely.

I am still here. I am thankful and more aware of the privilege of life and health than ever before. I see it each day with every friend taken ill and every patient who dies.

In the coming days and weeks, more public events and organized gatherings will be canceled, or at least postponed indefinitely. The wave of new cases has evoked a sure sense of terror in many. And I understand. I also understand the fear and panic that has only heightened as news outlets everywhere declare new pockets of trauma and death in areas near and far.

This is a rare moment in history. We have a choice to make. We can determine to find helplessness, failure and futility by trying to save ourselves no matter how we see fit. Or we can determine to find survival, resilience and endurance by saving each other. Thoughtfully. Responsibly.

Non-essential travel and crowds of anything much bigger than a walk in closet can fit can no longer be condoned. The risk to the many now outweighs the benefit to you. Until testing can be rolled out more fully and index cases are prevented from spawning clusters and outbreaks, we will have to do without all inclusive resorts, Le Bron James up close and Coachella. We will have to be more creative and resourceful to work, learn and manage other tasks from home.

I don’t know how long this will last. Nobody does. This may dissipate in the summer heat and become an unpleasant memory or slowly percolate into a call for Martial Law.

But we must not fall to fear or succumb to panic. We CAN wash our hands and avoid others when we feel sick. We CAN call a trusted doctor or public health unit to ask for advice before flocking to the ER. And we can help each other with patience, servitude, kindness and compassion.

I’m still surviving swimming pools and plan on climbing Kilimanjaro again one day. I’m not afraid. I’ve already survived.

#patiencenotpanic #altruismnotnihilism
#cleanhands #openhearts #openminds

You don’t have to be afraid but you have to stay at home – From the front line in Italy

Before Post

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney refuses to clarify 2022 remarks accusing the Freedom Convoy of ‘sedition’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Mark Carney described the Freedom Convoy as an act of ‘sedition’ and advocated for the government to use its power to crush the non-violent protest movement.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney refused to elaborate on comments he made in 2022 referring to the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protest as an act of “sedition” and advocating for the government to put an end to the movement.

“Well, look, I haven’t been a politician,” Carney said when a reporter in Windsor, Ontario, where a Freedom Convoy-linked border blockade took place in 2022, asked, “What do you say to Canadians who lost trust in the Liberal government back then and do not have trust in you now?”

“I became a politician a little more than two months ago, two and a half months ago,” he said. “I came in because I thought this country needed big change. We needed big change in the economy.”

Carney’s lack of an answer seems to be in stark contrast to the strong opinion he voiced in a February 7, 2022, column published in the Globe & Mail at the time of the convoy titled, “It’s Time To End The Sedition In Ottawa.”

In that piece, Carney wrote that the Freedom Convoy was a movement of “sedition,” adding, “That’s a word I never thought I’d use in Canada. It means incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.”

Carney went on to claim in the piece that if “left unchecked” by government authorities, the Freedom Convoy would “achieve” its “goal of undermining our democracy.”

Carney even targeted “[a]nyone sending money to the Convoy,” accusing them of “funding sedition.”

Internal emails from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) eventually showed that his definition of sedition were not in conformity with the definition under Canada’s Criminal Code, which explicitly lists the “use of force” as a necessary aspect of sedition.

“The key bit is ‘use of force,’” one RCMP officer noted in the emails. “I’m all about a resolution to this and a forceful one with us victorious but, from the facts on the ground, I don’t know we’re there except in a small number of cases.”

The reality is that the Freedom Convoy was a peaceful event of public protest against COVID mandates, and not one protestor was charged with sedition. However, the Liberal government, then under Justin Trudeau, did take an approach similar to the one advocated for by Carney, invoking the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters. Since then, a federal judge has ruled that such action was “not justified.”

Despite this, the two most prominent leaders of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, still face a possible 10-year prison sentence for their role in the non-violent assembly. LifeSiteNews has reported extensively on their trial.

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COVID-19

17-year-old died after taking COVID shot, but Ontario judge denies his family’s liability claim

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

An Ontario judge dismissed a liability claim from a family of a high schooler who died weeks after taking the COVID shot.

According to a published report on March 26 by Blacklock’s Reporter, Ontario Superior Court Justice Sandra Antoniani ruled that the Department of Health had no “duty of care” to a Canadian teenager who died after receiving a COVID vaccine.

“The plaintiff’s tragedy is real, but there is no private law duty of care made out,” Antoniani said.

“There is no private law duty of care to individual members of the public injured by government core policy decisions in the handling of health emergencies which impact the general population,” she continued.

In September 2021, 17-year-old Sean Hartman of Beeton, Ontario, passed away just three weeks after receiving a Pfizer-BioNtech COVID shot.

After his death, his family questioned if health officials had warned Canadians “that a possible side effect of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine was death.” The family took this petition to court but has been denied a hearing.

Antoniani alleged that “the defendants’ actions were aimed at mitigating the health impact of a global pandemic on the Canadian public. The defendants deemed that urgent action was necessary.”

“Imposition of a private duty of care would have a negative impact on the ability of the defendants to prioritize the interests of the entire public, with the distraction of fear over the possibility of harm to individual members of the public, and the risk of litigation and unlimited liability,” she ruled.

As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Dan Hartman, Sean’s father, filed a $35.6 million lawsuit against Pfizer after his son’s death.

However, only 103 claims of 1,859 have been approved to date, “where it has been determined by the Medical Review Board that there is a probable link between the injury and the vaccine, and that the injury is serious and permanent.”

Thus far, VISP has paid over $6 million to those injured by COVID injections, with some 2,000 claims remaining to be settled.

According to studies, post-vaccination heart conditions such as myocarditis are well documented in those, especially young males who have received the Pfizer jab.

Additionally, a recent study done by researchers with Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest showed that 17 countries have found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots as well as boosters.

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